Technical advances in the development of telecommunications networks allow telephone subscribers to enjoy a variety of telecommunications services. For example, subscribers may now subscribe to a call hold feature whereby one party to a call can temporarily place that call on hold to accept another call. To activate this service, the party seeking to place the call on hold (hereinafter, the “holding party”) does so by signaling an Ingress network switch, typically by actuating the switch hook on the telephone set.
Many business and other entities that receive large volumes of calls via one or more local or a toll-free numbers employ a private branch exchange (PBX) often in concert with an automatic call director to enable queuing of incoming calls for answer by an available agent. Upon answering the call, the attendant may need to place the calling party on hold to access a record or consult with a supervisor. After performing the required task, the attendant will then return to the call.
Currently, no mechanism exists for alerting network element(s) of a call being placed on hold. Thus, telecommunications carriers lack the ability to offer the party on hold (hereinafter, the “held party”) a service of interest during the hold period. The absence of any mechanism for alerting network elements of the call being placed on hold incurs another disadvantage. Typically, a telecommunications carrier will typically commit certain resources within its network in order to complete a call between the calling and called party. Usually, such resources remain committed for the duration of the call and only upon call completion do such resources become available for other calls. Thus, such resources remain committed even during the interval in which a call remains on hold. Unfortunately, there currently exists no mechanism for enabling such network resources to know when a call has been placed on hold to allow their release and re-use during the hold period.
Thus, there is a need for a technique for propagating a signal among elements within a telecommunications network to alert each element when a call is placed on hold.